Dalziel and Pascoe creator Reginald Hill dies | Books | The Guardian Dalziel and Pascoe creator Reginald Hill dies Ian Rankin leads tributes to prolific crime writer from County Durham Reginald Hill at the Edinburgh international book festival. Photograph: Murdo Macleod Close This article is 5 years old The writer Reginald Hill, who created the Yorkshire detective duo Andrew Dalziel and Peter Pascoe, has died aged 75. Hill charted the ups and downs of his two contrasting sleuths in more than 20 novels published over four decades after his debut, A Clubbable Woman (1970) alongside a substantial body of other crime fiction and thrillers. He won the Crime Writers Association's Golden Dagger in 1990 for Bones and Silence , and the Diamond Dagger for the series as a whole in 1995. Writer Ian Rankin, who won the Diamond Dagger himself in 2005, paid tribute to Hill's great good humour, the intelligence of his writing and the generous advice he gave to young authors. "I didn't read crime fiction until I was in my 20s," Rankin said.

"Hill was one of the first British writers I read. His plotting was elegant and his characters were larger than life – once you read about Andy Dalziel he's never forgotten. I daresay there are shadings of him in my Inspector Rebus – they're both bolshie and maverick and they don't look after themselves." According to Rankin, Hill was seen as a "traditional crime writer, but with a modern sensibility". "He had a lot of fun with his characters," he added, "there was even a story where he sent Dalziel into space. But he allowed the real world to be part of his stories, letting his characters age in real time." For the crime writer Mark Billingham, news of Hill's death was "tragic, not only because he was an amazing writer, still working at the height of his powers, but also because he was one of the most lovely men you could ever meet. He was someone I looked up to enormously as a writer and a man." Born in West Hartlepool in 1936, Hill wrote "for fun" from an early age, ending up with "a bottom drawer of first chapters".

It was at the age of 30 when he began taking his writing a little more seriously – the first Dalziel and Pascoe novel was published four years later. Fuelled by the success of the BBC television adaptations , with Warren Clarke playing the curmedgeonly Dalziel and Colin Buchanan his university-educated assistant Pascoe, Hill went on to find a worldwide audience. A series of five books set in Luton featuring a black private investigator called Joe Sixsmith followed, with a host of other novels published under other names, including a series of thrillers as Patrick Ruell. Dalziel and Pascoe (TV Series 1996– ) - IMDb IMDb There was an error trying to load your rating for this title. Some parts of this page won't work property. Please reload or try later. X Beta I'm Watching This! Keep track of everything you watch; tell your friends. Error Supt. Dalziel and partner DI Pascoe investigate murders, and find a bond forming between them despite their blatantly differing personalities. Creator: With a second murder to investigate, the police are no further ahead. Animal rights activists had been threatening Declan Roach and there was a good deal of tension on the team. Professor Cunningham ...

8.8 A sunburned Det. Supt Andy Dalziel returns from his holiday in Australia and finds himself immediately investigating a murder. The dead man is Declan Roach, a researcher at the local university who ... 8.7 Having recovered from his wounds Andy Dalziel returns to the fold just as Peter Pascoe is in the midst of an undercover operation trying to capture a serial killer. Peter corners the man who then ... 8.3 Famous Directors: From Sundance to Prominence From Christopher Nolan to Quentin Tarantino and every Coen brother in between, many of today's most popular directors got their start at the Sundance Film Festival . Here's a list of some of the biggest names to go from Sundance to Hollywood prominence.

a list of 32 titles created 06 Jul 2013 a list of 25 titles created 18 May 2014 a list of 47 titles created 24 Sep 2015 a list of 45 titles created 1 month ago a list of 38 titles created 3 weeks ago Title: Dalziel and Pascoe (1996– ) 7.3/10 Want to share IMDb's rating on your own site? Use the HTML below. You must be a registered user to use the IMDb rating plugin. 2 wins & 3 nominations. See more awards » Photos DI Jack Frost is an unconventional policeman with sympathy for the underdog and an instinct for moral justice. Sloppy, disorganized and disrespectful, he attracts trouble like a magnet. Stars: David Jason, Bruce Alexander, John Lyons British crime investigation series based around aristocratic, Oxford-educated Detective Inspector Thomas Lynley and his working-class assistant Sergeant Barbara Havers. Stars: Nathaniel Parker, Sharon Small, Lesley Vickerage Inspector Morse has an ear for music, a taste for beer and a nose for crime. He sets out with Sergeant Lewis to solve each intriguing case.

Stars: John Thaw, Kevin Whately, James Grout Waking the Dead (TV Series 2000) Crime | Drama | Mystery Detective Superintendent Peter Boyd is the leader of a police team which investigates unsolved murders using modern technology. Stars: Trevor Eve, Sue Johnston, Wil Johnson Inspector George Gently (TV Series 2007) Crime | Drama | Mystery With the help of DS John Bacchus, Inspector George Gently spends his days bringing to justice members of the criminal underworld who are unfortunate enough to have the intrepid investigator assigned to their cases. Stars: Martin Shaw, Lee Ingleby, Simon Hubbard DCI Banks (TV Series 2010) Crime | Drama | Mystery The tenacious and stubborn DCI Banks unravels disturbing murder mysteries aided by his young assistants, DS Annie Cabbot and DI Helen Morton. Stars: Stephen Tompkinson, Jack Deam, Andrea Lowe Inspector Robert Lewis and Sergeant James Hathaway solve the tough cases that the learned inhabitants of Oxford throw at them.

Stars: Kevin Whately, Laurence Fox, Clare Holman New Tricks (TV Series 2003) Comedy | Crime | Drama Three retired police officers are drafted in to solve cold cases, with a touch of comedy and drama Stars: Dennis Waterman, Amanda Redman, Alun Armstrong The Maryhill CID investigates gruesome murders against the bleak backdrop of the city of Glasgow. Stars: Blythe Duff, Colin McCredie, John Michie With her caustic wit and singular charm, DCI Vera Stanhope and her trusted right-hand man DS Joe Ashworth face a series of captivating murder mysteries set against the breathtaking Northumberland landscape. Stars: Brenda Blethyn, Jon Morrison, David Leon Set in Edinburgh, the mercurial Detective Inspector John Rebus's investigations lead him through the city's ancient beauty and into its more sinister quarters. Stars: Ken Stott, Claire Price, Jennifer Black Above Suspicion (TV Series 2009) Crime | Drama | Thriller DC Anna Travis joins a team on the hunt for a particularly gruesome serial killer. When the latest victim is found and doesn't fit the usual profile of the killer's victims, Travis sets out to prove herself.

Stars: Kelly Reilly, Ciarán Hinds, Jason Durr Edit Storyline Supt. Dalziel and partner DI Pascoe investigate murders, and find a bond forming between them despite their blatantly differing personalities. 16 March 1996 (UK) See more » Also Known As: Not Quite Like the Novels, But Worth Watching 19 May 2010 | by b_clerkin (New York) – See all my reviews I love Reginald Hill's novels upon which these shows were based and having read the lot, I have to agree with others in saying that the cast is less than accurate, though Warren Clarke and David Royle come closer in spirit to their book counterparts, if not physically. Colin Buchanan is too insubstantial to make Pascoe as strong as he is in the books and Susannah Corbett, while getting Ellie's smug self-satisfied know-it-allness down pat, looks and acts too hard - she fails to relay the bits of vulnerable sweetness of the book Ellie that makes it clear why Pascoe adores her.

That being said, the stories remain fairly true to the novels, if far less bawdy and they retain much of the dark Northern humor that makes the books so enjoyable. With Clarke lacking the sheer bulk and crudity of the book Fat Andy, the scenes demonstrating his brilliance as a detective and perspicacity about the human condition are far less surprising than when they emerge in the novels. Even after you've read several of the stories, Hill makes Dalziel so obnoxious and primitive, you can visualize the scrapes on his knuckles from dragging them on the ground, when his genius and sensitivity lead to the truth - and that is what Dalziel is all about, getting to the truth - it still startles. However, judging the TV versions without considering the novel versions, the series is a cut above the standard fare in the UK, let alone the US, and is literate, funny, intriguing and thoroughly enjoyable. The acting, direction, pacing and scenery are completely credible and it is a treat to suspend reality to watch this - and the other UK coppers like Barnaby, Frost, Morse, et al. 6 of 7 people found this review helpful. Was this review helpful to you?

Yes Dalziel & Pascoe | Claresholm Public Library | BiblioCommons LittleNoName Aug 03, 2016 I only watched one episode as I thought it was too much about the detectives lives. Might come back to when Ive watched all the other movies & series I have piled up in my "for later" shelf. Like 1 11030sw55 Jun 20, 2016 Reginald Hill is my absolute favorite mystery author and I had considerable trepidation about television adaptions of his books, but this first series seems true to the sources. Dalziel is well cast, though maybe not as fat as written. Surprising to me, these dvds are a new way to enjoy the stories, now that the author has died and there will no longer be new books published. Like c cjkerry Sep 07, 2015 Decent mystery series. The first two episodes are better than the third one, though that one is still worth watching. Like l LauraSteinert Jul 24, 2015 There is no excuse for it, but I actually like Dalziel.

This is not what I expected (haven't read the books) but the second disk is one long episode and it was very good. Well worth watching. Like l Loge99 Mar 25, 2015 The British certainly like their mysteries. This one is a step up from series like Midsommer Murders (which are tiresomely cozy and much the same from one episode to another). Ranks with P.D. James' Thaw series. Like f Fionaenzo Jul 27, 2013 what a great series! the acting of the main characters is terrific -- they stay true to the character but also grow as individuals . gets better and better with each season - plot twists and some dialogue is laugh out loud funny once you know the characters. many literary references and ridicule of same -- smart show. Like c c_anderson May 23, 2010 Not as good as the books! of course, a 1 1/2 hour show has to leave out some detail, but Pascoe doesn't look at all like his description in the novels (slight and dark), and the Northern dialect has been toned down in the show.

Like The evolution of the detective The evolution of the detective... At one point in my latest novel, The Burning Girl , Detective Inspector Tom Thorne - my series character - is involved in extracting information from a witness through the somewhat unconventional use of a steam iron. We have indeed come a long way since the days of Sherlock Holmes and Lord Peter Wimsey, for whom such behaviour would have been anathema. These were men who brought scoundrels to book in days infinitely more genteel - though Wimsey was known to wave a shooting stick around when his dander was up, and Holmes once rapped Moriarty across the knuckles with a meerschaum... How have we got from the gentleman detective to one whom it is often difficult to tell apart from his quarry? And why, when the likes of Edmund Wilson damned the fiction he inhabits as "no better than newspaper strips" does the detective - cop, private eye or enthusiastic amateur - remain so popular? It all began with Holmes, of course... Once A Study in Scarlet had been published, in 1887, the game was well and truly afoot.

Though Poe's Murders in the Rue Morgue (1841) can claim the first detective in fiction, and Wilkie Collins' The Moonstone (1868) is regarded as the first modern detective novel, Conan Doyle's creation captured the popular imagination to an extent that Poe's Auguste Dupin and Collins' Sergeant Cuff had never approached. The adventures of the Great Detective gripped readers to the extent that, when he was killed off, many took to wearing black armbands. Doyle had known what he was doing from the beginning, of course. He wrote later how it had struck him that "a single character running through a series [in a magazine], if it only engaged the attention of the reader, would bind that reader to that particular magazine". Readers were bound hand and foot. In their droves... Holmes was the first successful series detective because he embodied values that readers of the time found convincing. He stood, above all, for science (an exciting new force) and using only the power of his own mind - "like a racing engine tearing itself to pieces" - to fight crime. But Doyle balanced this by making Holmes arrogant, impatient and eccentric.

He made him an individual, and in doing so gave him everything necessary to create a very human hero. Before the First World War, the short story was detective fiction's predominant literary form. Another successful practitioner was GK Chesterton, whose Father Brown appeared in 1911. Chesterton had strong feelings about the way crime fighters should operate, and his beliefs were at one time enshrined in the oath sworn on joining the British Detection Club. Members had to vow that their fictional sleuths would not be reliant on "divine revelation, feminine intuition, mumbo-jumbo, jiggery-pokery, coincidence or Act of God". There was a good deal of rule-making along such lines. In 1929, RA Knox constructed a set of commandments for crime writers, known as the Decalogue, which insist, among other things, that the detective cannot withhold clues from the reader and must not himself be the killer. The Decalogue also instructs that stories shall feature no more than one secret passage and contain no Chinamen, so it has perhaps not dated awfully well, but as a rubric it informed much of detective fiction's golden age. Between the wars, the novel displaced the short story.

The shifting patterns of domestic life gave women more time to read and to write them, and the period came to be dominated in this country by the so-called Queens of Crime - Agatha Christie, Dorothy L Sayers and Margery Allingham - and their creations Hercule Poirot and Jane Marple, Lord Peter Wimsey and Albert Campion respectively. Those who damn these writers regard their novels as reflecting a conservative, often fairy-tale, world view in which the do-badder was usually from the lower classes or - worse - a dirty foreigner. It was a world preserved in aspic, far removed from mass unemployment, general strikes, the Great Depression and the rise of fascism. Others, more sympathetic to what became known as "cosies", insist that the novels grew out of a need for post-war convalescence and healing; readers no longer needed flesh-and-blood heroes and had had a bellyful of onstage violence. For whatever reason, these tales were massively popular and their detectives were quickly pressed to the public bosom.

Christie's Poirot, who first appeared in The Mysterious Affair at Styles (1921), was a twitching bundle of vanity and foible, the brilliance of his brain contrasting sharply with his seeming disregard for the victim - though as far as detective fiction of the era went, he was hardly unique in this respect. Allingham - perhaps the most unappreciated of the writers of the golden age - would later develop and stretch the genre, most notably with Tiger in the Smoke, but early on, Albert Campion was little more than a Woosterish, silly-ass figure. Sayers' Wimsey (which I've always thought sounded like a nasty ailment, as in “I shan't stand up, I've got a touch of Sayer's Wimsey”) was perhaps the silliest of them all. With a servant for a sidekick he was, like Campion, and Ngaio Marsh's Roderick Alleyn, an aristocrat who, like most detectives from this period, has not dated well. These characters, in what Graham Greene described as "stories of forged wills, disinheritance, avaricious heirs and of course railway timetables", now seem foolish and superior.

In the Twenties and Thirties they were pre-eminent, but across the Atlantic a very different kind of detective began to take on cases. In 1923, Dashiell Hammett wrote a story called Arson Plus for Black Mask magazine, introducing a ruthless investigator known only as the Continental Op. The Op had his own way of doing things, and Hammett had a unique way of describing them. These were the rules of detection as taught to Hammett during his own career working for the famous Pinkerton agency. The detective's role was to remain anonymous, protect good people from bad, and keep an emotional distance. Hammett published The Maltese Falcon in 1930, distilling all this experience and his own radical world-view into the creation of Sam Spade. The hardboiled gumshoe was an instant success. Dorothy Parker wrote how Spade had her "mooning around in a daze of love such as I had not known for any character in literature since I encountered Sir Launcelot". It's hard to imagine Parker quite so twittery and lovestruck over Englishmen in boaters or egg-headed, mustachioed Belgians.

America did have its own golden age: in 1925, Earl Derr Biggers created Charlie Chan and he was quickly followed by Philo Vance, SS Van Dine's priggish gentleman sleuth. These cosy characters set the stage for the hugely popular Ellery Queen and, later, Nero Wolfe, Rex Stout's obese and taciturn sleuth, who was America's answer to Sherlock Holmes. Loved as all these figures were, however, there were new voices, eager to follow Hammett's lead and write about characters who operated in the real world rather than the one Raymond Chandler described as "stilted and artificial to the point of burlesque". Chandler famously said that Hammett had given murder "back to the people that commit it for reasons" - and it was Chandler who took the hardboiled detective to another level. He defined this new hero as a man "neither tarnished nor afraid", a man who could walk down mean streets, "though not himself mean" but rather a man of honour and integrity.

Philip Marlowe appeared in Chandler's The Big Sleep in 1939, and it is no coincidence that his name echoes that of the man who wrote Le Morte d'Arthur. Indeed, in early drafts Marlowe had been called Malory. Like many before and since, Chandler saw the detective as embodying the medieval conception of chivalry. A number of detectives, within their respective milieux, still behave as modern-day knights, Quixotic or otherwise, though the steeds are motorised and the maidens tend to be drop-dead gorgeous redheads. John D MacDonald described his detective Travis McGee as a "tattered knight on a spavined steed," while even the likes of Peter Wimsey and his blue-blooded cohorts have been called "knights in fancy dress". The character of the detective, especially of the private eye for hire, had changed for ever. These were men who worked in a "world gone wrong" and answered to no higher power; not to God, like Father Brown, and certainly not to science, like Holmes or Wolfe. They saw the world from the perspective of the man on the street, and the man on the street couldn't get enough of them.

The character of the detective continued to develop in contrasting directions after the Second World War. Though Christie and Allingham were still going strong, detective fiction as a form was challenged by the espionage novels of Eric Ambler and Graham Greene, by writers such as Patricia Highsmith (whose thrillers contained no detective at all), and by the emerging sub-genre of the police procedural. Suddenly, even when there was a detective on the case, the novels were about a lot more than the detection itself. Depth of character was as important as the hunt for clues. Writers were keen to explore the psychological make-up of the criminal, and "Why?" had become as important as "How?" Georges Simenon was deep into what would become a series of more than 70 novels featuring Inspector Maigret, who solved crime through intuition and an understanding of human nature. Marlowe, too, was blossoming as a character, his development through Chandler's later novels launching an era of socially and politically aware sleuths. While sensitivity was finding its way into the codes of some detectives, others still preferred the more direct approach.

Mike Hammer, introduced in Mickey Spillane's I, the Jury, had thrown sex and violence into the mix and spawned a host of imitators, with ersatz pulp-fiction from pseudonymous writers such as Darcy Glinto and Hank Janson proving immensely popular in Britain. Hammer and his ilk dealt out their own brand of eye-for-an-eye justice in a series of misogynistic, violent yarns. Others, such as Ross MacDonald's Lew Archer, continued to explore deeper social issues - and both strains proved to be excellent fodder for film and television. From its earliest days, the mass media played an important role in the popular perception of the detective. The gentler breed - The Saint, The Falcon, Mr Moto - were hugely popular in the Thirties, but their hardboiled descendants came to define the role during the film noir movement from the Forties on in classic movies such as The Maltese Falcon (1941) and The Big Sleep (1946).

Later on, films would introduce the "lone wolf" detective, the anti-authority maverick who shot and drove his way through movies such as Bullitt (1968) and The French Connection and Dirty Harry (both 1971). The small screen, too, has helped to shape our understanding of the detective, not only with adaptations of novels but with a slew of made-for-TV versions. In the Seventies, American television produced a detective for everyone. It gave us Columbo, who looks like Marlowe and thinks like Poirot, together with a string of "differently abled" detectives: Longstreet, who is blind; Ironside, who is a wheelchair-user; and Frank Cannon, who simply appears to have eaten all the pies. In the UK, the trend was towards ethnicity and regionalism. So we watched Shoestring, the Bristol-based radio detective; Van Der Valk, the Dutch detective; and David Yip as The Chinese Detective, flying solo in the face of one of RA Knox's sillier commandments... In the Sixties and Seventies, a new generation of crime queens took the conventions of the golden age and twisted them to their own ends.

PD James's Adam Dalgleish and Ruth Rendell's Reginald Wexford were from a different background: they were middle-class men, cultured rather than privileged. With Colin Dexter's opera-loving Inspector Morse, they formed a new wave of cerebral coppers who would become TV favourites and who - while not overly fond of getting their knuckles bruised - were still a million miles away from the top-hatted toffs of half a century before. In 1972, PD James created Cordelia Gray, one of the first professional private detectives in British fiction. There had been female investigators as far back as the late 19th century, rejoicing in names such as Nora Van Snoop and Loveday Brooke, Lady Detective, but the time was now ripe for women to take centre stage, as opposed to simply being victims, secretaries or pulse-quickening femmes fatales.

Writers such as Marcia Muller (Sharon McCone), Sue Grafton (Kinsey Millhone) and Sara Paretsky (VI Warshawski) in the US and Liza Cody (Anna Lee) in the UK, created female private investigators who were every bit as hardboiled as their male counterparts, paving the way for bestselling contemporary writers such as Val McDermid and Patricia Cornwell. By the late Eighties, a number of important new detectives were appearing in print on both sides of the Atlantic. Ian Rankin's John Rebus - whose books now account for 10 per cent of all crime fiction sales in the UK - appeared in the same year as Peter Robinson's Alan Banks. These detectives, together with John Harvey's Charlie Resnick, are modern men who like a drink and listen to music and have love affairs. They are dour, curmudgeonly even, but essentially compassionate. With Wexford, Dalgleish and Reginald Hill's double act of Dalziel and Pascoe, they have taken British detective fiction into the 21st century.

In the US, James Lee Burke's detective Dave Robicheaux (a Louisiana Launcelot), Lawrence Block's Matt Scudder and Michael Connelly's Harry Bosch are the pick of a disparate bunch of reformed alcoholics, manic depressives and pill-poppers. Bosch is probably the most rounded, consistently interesting detective in American crime fiction now, his creator ensuring that the character carries the scars of each case to the next book, taking care to re-invent him at regular intervals. Connelly's Lost Light is one of only two detective novels to make me cry; the other was a classic Christie, but I was crying with laughter at the line: "'How queer!' Poirot ejaculated." So where does the detective go from here? Mystery fiction has never been more popular, with professionals and amateurs alike busily cracking historical mysteries, forensic mysteries, and - in the United States - cat, cookery, golf and (God help us) quilting mysteries, in their tens of thousands every year. Arguably, the detective in American fiction has not made as great a journey as his or her British counterpart.

The spirit of Marlowe is alive in Harry Bosch, and though it's still too early, it will be interesting to look back in a decade and see just how September 11 might have affected things. In the UK, there are still plenty of fictional flatfoots pounding the mean streets, my own included, though Detective Inspector Tom Thorne - and he is by no means alone - is perhaps a little meaner than Raymond Chandler envisaged 60 years ago. Some, dismissive of the genre, point to what they see as its clichés: to the battles with the booze and the problems with relationships and the tortured pasts. I'm sure that the majority of real detectives have no more than the occasional half of shandy and live in domestic bliss, and are not haunted by the victims of crimes they could not solve. The evidence would suggest, however, that people do not want to read about these characters, and I for one don't care to write about them. Who wants to know about a cowboy without a gun or a horse? Like most of those who write modern detective fiction, I endeavour to make my central character stand out from the pack.

I have tried to give Tom Thorne his own insecurities and passions - a blind devotion to a failing football team, a perverse love for country music, an almost total ignorance of when he isn't wanted and, rather more sadly, when he is. Above all, I want my hero to be unpredictable. But at the same time, however much he is a character with unique drives and demons, he owes a debt to the detectives created in the past 20 years, as they in turn honour those from a previous era, in the continuing evolution of one of fiction's most enduring archetypes. At another point in his latest investigation, Tom Thorne sleeps with someone materially involved in the case, affecting its outcome in a profound and disturbing way. What on earth would the Great Detective have done in the same situation? Well... he'd probably have shut himself away in Baker Street, reached for his violin and his cocaine, and lost himself in an orgy of music and hard drugs. On second thoughts, perhaps we haven't come so very far after all. This article was first written for The Independent in July 2004.

Dalziel & Pascoe | Vancouver Island Regional Library | BiblioCommons LittleNoName Aug 03, 2016 I only watched one episode as I thought it was too much about the detectives lives. Might come back to when Ive watched all the other movies & series I have piled up in my "for later" shelf. Like 1 11030sw55 Jun 20, 2016 Reginald Hill is my absolute favorite mystery author and I had considerable trepidation about television adaptions of his books, but this first series seems true to the sources. Dalziel is well cast, though maybe not as fat as written. Surprising to me, these dvds are a new way to enjoy the stories, now that the author has died and there will no longer be new books published. Like c cjkerry Sep 07, 2015 Decent mystery series. The first two episodes are better than the third one, though that one is still worth watching. Like l LauraSteinert Jul 24, 2015 There is no excuse for it, but I actually like Dalziel.

This is not what I expected (haven't read the books) but the second disk is one long episode and it was very good. Well worth watching. Like l Loge99 Mar 25, 2015 The British certainly like their mysteries. This one is a step up from series like Midsommer Murders (which are tiresomely cozy and much the same from one episode to another). Ranks with P.D. James' Thaw series. Like f Fionaenzo Jul 27, 2013 what a great series! the acting of the main characters is terrific -- they stay true to the character but also grow as individuals . gets better and better with each season - plot twists and some dialogue is laugh out loud funny once you know the characters. many literary references and ridicule of same -- smart show. Like c c_anderson May 23, 2010 Not as good as the books! of course, a 1 1/2 hour show has to leave out some detail, but Pascoe doesn't look at all like his description in the novels (slight and dark), and the Northern dialect has been toned down in the show.

Like BBC - Drama - Dalziel and Pascoe About the Show About the Show About the Show The unlikely partnership of politically incorrect Dalziel and his more sensitive and intellectual sidekick Pascoe has won the series millions of viewers. Set in the fictional Yorkshire town of Wetherton, the duo is always on hand to solve the classic murder mystery, while maintaining a down to earth wit and humour. Stars Warren Clarke (Dalziel), Colin Buchanan (Pascoe) and Jennifer James (Kim 'Posh' Spicer) reflect on the show's success. Actor Colin Buchanan cannot quite put his finger on the secret of its continuing success, but admits: "The relationship between Warren and I just works. We get on well off screen and our chemistry - if that's the right word - transfers onto screen. "The films are of a consistently high standard. It's quality drama and this in turn attracts great talent to come and appear in the series." Warren adds: "When we were cast as Dalziel and Pascoe I hoped that Colin and I would become friends, and we have.

We've also grown into the roles over the years, so we fit them very well which all adds to the success of the series." Warren loves playing the larger than life, nose-picking Dalziel, but his biggest bug-bear on and off screen is the pronunciation of his character's name. "No-one can pronounce it properly," he laughs: "He gets called Dal-zeel, Dalzel, and I have even been called Dempsey from the eighties cop series Dempsey and Makepeace by a Brummie cab driver!" Just for the record, it is pronounced Dee-el, in case you ever bump into Warren and don't wish to upset him! Jennifer says her character is great fun to play: "She's very good at her job, enjoys life, is fun loving and not afraid to speak her mind. Sometimes, she can be too outspoken for her own good though, as viewers will see as the series unfolds." With the production team based at BBC Birmingham's television drama village at the University of Birmingham, Warren likes returning to the area for filming as he says the people in the Midlands are "so friendly", while Colin has taken it a step further and made Birmingham his home.

He's even a season ticket holder at Birmingham City Football Club and admits he is prone to mood swings depending on his team's results. "The crew checks the fixture list when we're filming to see what kind of mood I'll be in when I come on set," he laughs. "If the Blues have won I think they must all give a huge sigh of relief as they know I'll be in a good mood. But beware if we have lost!" The Books Dalziel and Pascoe is based on the novels of writer Reginald Hill. They were first introduced to the public in the 1970 novel A Clubbable Woman. Since then the duo have appeared in 19 further books. Awards Reginald Hill obituary | Books | The Guardian Reginald Hill obituary Crime writer best known for his novels about the detectives Dalziel and Pascoe Reginald Hill in 2005. The police were described as both ‘protectors and persecutors’ in one of his novels.

Photograph: Charles Sturge/Rex Crime writer best known for his novels about the detectives Dalziel and Pascoe Mike Ripley Friday 13 January 2012 11.23 EST First published on Friday 13 January 2012 11.23 EST Share on Messenger Close On the publication of the 21st Dalziel and Pascoe novel in 2007, an interviewer asked Reginald Hill if this was his 48th published novel to date. Hill replied: "That sounds very reasonable. I counted religiously till I got to 10, then in a more secular fashion till I got to 20, and after that I lost interest in keeping a tally. I mean, if 20 doesn't mean you're a real writer, then what number does?" Such a self-effacing reply was typical of the modest and softly spoken Hill, who has died aged 75 after suffering from a brain tumour. One of Britain's most consistently successful crime writers, he could easily have been mistaken for an absent-minded academic or a country parson.

Hill was best known for his crime novels about Dalziel and Pascoe, which were adapted for BBC television from 1996 to 2007. It was not until 1980, when he became a full-time writer, that he realised that his books about the detective duo were his "banker", just as Ruth Rendell regarded her Inspector Wexford books as her "bread and butter". Even so, he refused to turn out one a year – the norm for crime writers with a series – preferring instead to alternate them with thrillers, historical novels, science fiction and, later, a smaller humorous series set in Luton, featuring the black private detective Joe Sixsmith. The opening lines of Hill's first completed (but second to be published) novel, Fell of Dark (1971), were clearly prophetic: "I possess the Englishman's usual ambivalent attitude to the police. They are at once protectors and persecutors." When they made their debut in A Clubbable Woman in 1970, Dalziel and Pascoe were indeed an ambivalent pair, just as likely to bully and persecute a suspect as ride to the rescue of a victim.

The pairing of the rough and rude Supt "Fat Andy" Dalziel with the university-educated and very politically correct Sgt Peter Pascoe led to Hill being labelled "perhaps the most interesting of his generation of crime writers" by the author HRF Keating . Since Conan Doyle, most crime writers had provided a Watson to their Holmes; a character less intelligent than the great detective who could filter the plot and explain the clues to the reader. Hill chose to create a genuine double act. Each partner could stand and succeed alone, but together the pair became formidable. Like Laurel and Hardy, Dalziel and Pascoe bounced and sparked off each other and while complete opposites physically, politically and intellectually, there was a clear and present bond of affection and respect, perhaps even love, between them. Hill wrote crime novels in a particularly English way, with lots of jokes (something he searched for in vain in much Scandinavian crime writing) and an affection for northern, non-metropolitan settings. He could create fleshed-out, multi-dimensional characters without any apparent effort, a skill he attributed to his belief that he could never write about someone "who wasn't interesting".

Hill was born in Hartlepool, Durham, the son of the professional footballer Reg Hill, who played for Hartlepools United (as it was then known) from 1932 to 1937. By the time the boy was three, the family had moved to Cumbria, which was to remain his home. He was educated at Carlisle grammar school (now Trinity school) and did his national service in the Border Regiment (1955-57), serving in Göttingen, Germany. He then studied English at St Catherine's College, Oxford, and became a teacher, initially in Essex and then as a lecturer at a teacher-training college in Doncaster in the 1960s and 70s. There, the foundations of his fictional Mid-Yorkshire Constabulary were laid as he began to write down the stories that had "buzzed around" him since his youth.

The 1970s proved to be an intensely productive decade for Hill who, while working as a full-time teacher, managed to produce 18 novels, a dozen or more short stories, the television play An Affair of Honour for the BBC's 30-Minute Theatre series (though no recordings survive) and even a comedy sketch for The Dave Allen Show. He revealed himself to be a serious student of crime fiction with an influential essay on the genre, published in Whodunit? (1982), edited by Keating. Hill was proud of the fact that he retained the same literary agent and the same primary publisher, HarperCollins, throughout his career. The first Dalziel and Pascoe novel was published under the Collins Crime Club imprint. For many years his editor there was the formidable Elizabeth Walter, who insisted he was always referred to as Reginald and never Reg, as one would never think of shortening Agatha Christie's name to "Ag". It was a surprise to many in the crime-writing world that it took Hill 20 years to win the Crime Writers' Association's Gold Dagger award, for Bones and Silence in 1990.

(He received the Cartier Diamond Dagger for lifetime achievement five years later.) Even more surprising, in an era when detectives dominated TV drama, was that it took so long for Dalziel and Pascoe to reach the small screen. There had been an earlier attempt, by Yorkshire Television, in 1993, and a pilot was made starring the comedians Hale and Pace as the dynamic duo. The result was less than dynamic and, to Hill's relief, a series was never commissioned. The project was then quickly taken up by the BBC, attracting quality scriptwriters such as Alan Plater and Malcolm Bradbury and the actors Warren Clarke and Colin Buchanan in the lead roles. Hill was given the chance to write scripts for the series, but he declined, claiming that he did not fancy "everybody putting their halfpenny-worth in" during the production process. He was, and remained, busy enough anyway. He wrote historical novels including No Man's Land (1985) and notable standalone thrillers such as The Spy's Wife (1980) and The Woodcutter (2010).

He also published work under various pen names: as Patrick Ruell, he wrote a string of light-hearted thrillers stuffed with literary references; as Dick Morland, he wrote the dystopian novel Albion! Albion! (1974); and, as Charles Underhill, he produced two 17th-century romps featuring Captain Fantom, a soldier of fortune described in John Aubrey's Brief Lives as a "great ravisher". Hill was happiest in his Cumbrian home, near Ravenglass, with his wife, Pat, whom he married in 1960, and a variety of dogs and cats. He was reluctant to climb aboard the literary festival roundabout but made a rare exception in 2009, appearing at the Harrogate crime-writing festival on a platform with John Banville which touched on the differences (if any) between "literary" and crime fiction. Hill said: "When I get up in the morning, I ask my wife whether I should write a Booker prize-winning novel, or another bestselling crime book. We always come down on the side of the crime book." All who met him thought of him as a gentle man as well as a proper gentleman.

Those who knew him well appreciated his generosity of spirit, especially to new writers, and his sometimes wicked sense of humour. He is survived by Pat. • Reginald Charles Hill, writer, born 3 April 1936; died 12 January 2012 Dalziel and Pascoe - All The Tropes Dalziel and Pascoe All Subpages Create New Series of novels by Reginald Hill, set Set Oop North in a fictional Yorkshire town. The series revolves around two detectives, Andy Dalziel (pronounced dee-ell) and Peter Pascoe. Dalziel is a grumpy, overweight, politically incorrect character, while Pascoe is a more sensitive academic with a degree in Social Sciences. (However, see the description below under Noble Bigot with a Badge ). A television series based on the books and characters ran from 1996-2007 and featured Warren Clarke as Dalziel and Colin Buchanan as Pascoe. There was a one-off adaptation with Hale and Pace but this is reviled by fans and even the original writer. Other characters include DC Kim "Posh" Spicer and an Asian character (name needed), who was killed off recently.

Tropes used in Dalziel and Pascoe include: Action Girl : Shirley Novello. Affectionate Parody : The novels Pictures of Perfection and A Cure for All Diseases, both loving send-ups of Jane Austen. All Gays Are Promiscuous : spectacularly averted in both the novels and the series--Wield has a grand total of three love interests. Animal Testing : The Wood Beyond. Animal Wrongs Group : Despite The Wood Beyond's dislike for Animal Testing , the animal rights activists (aside from Cap Marvell) don't exactly come off well themselves. Animals Hate Him : In the novels, Edwin Digweed vs. Monte and Tig. Anonymous Killer Narrator : Dialogues of the Dead. Breaking the Fourth Wall : "Auteur Theory," which is about the fate of a Dalziel and Pascoe novel. Breakout Villain : Franny Roote (novels only). Clueless Deputy : The terminally inept Constable Hector.

Comic Book Time : Although it varies, the characters are aging between one-quarter to one-half "real time." Coming Out Story : Wield comes out to both of his superiors in Child's Play, after the young man with whom he has had a brief affair is murdered. To Wield's astonishment, Dalziel knew all along, although Pascoe was completely clueless. In Pictures of Perfection, Edwin Digweed tells Wield that he was outed about thirty years earlier after an affair with an unnamed lord. As homosexuality was still criminalized at the time, Digweed was prosecuted and disbarred, and eventually left the country. Connect the Deaths : Dialogues of the Dead. Continuity Nod : Dalziel's eventual girlfriend from Recalled to Life turns out to have a small but important part in Good Morning, Midnight, where she appears as a corpse.) Franny Roote's reappearance in Arms and the Women, after not being seen since the second novel, An Advancement of Learning. Wield himself lampshades that his subplot in Death's Jest-Book revisits Child's Play. Cowboy Cop : Pascoe in the TV episode Under Dark Stars. Da Chief : CC Raymond.

December-December Romance : Dalziel and Cap Marvell. Wield and Digweed also qualify, although Digweed is a decade older. Depraved Bisexual : Franny Roote in An Advancement of Learning. Driven to Suicide : a subplot in Bones and Silence. Crops up again in On Beulah Height, for much less sympathetic reasons. Electrified Bathtub : A variant in Dialogues of the Dead. Embarrassing Middle Name : Andrew Hamish Dalziel. Dalziel is visibly appalled when somebody mentions it, relatively late in the series. Face Heel Turn : By the end of the short story "One Small Step," set many years in the future, Pascoe turns out to have become, if not corrupt, then certainly tainted. Fair Cop : In the early episodes, Sanjay Singh is a male example. In the novels, DC Shirley Novello deliberately subverts this by leaving off makeup and wearing baggy clothes. Fake-Out Opening : Pictures of Perfection. Fatal Attraction : Dalziel suspects his love interest in An April Shroud may be a Black Widow , and Good Morning, Midnight reveals that his girlfriend at the end of Recalled to Life was also serious trouble.

The trope is played absolutely straight in Dialogues of the Dead and the beginning of Death's Jest-Book. Faux Yay : Hinted at with the journalist in Ruling Passion. Fish Out of Water : In the novel Recalled to Life, Dalziel's investigations take him off to the United States, with predictable results. The television adaptation eliminates that chunk of the novel, for understandable reasons . Fourth Date Marriage : In Pictures of Perfection, Digweed proposes to Wield after they've known each other for exactly two days. Gaydar : Both Ellie and Dalziel figure out Wield almost immediately, although neither one lets on. Ironically, Wield's gaydar is non-existent. Gayngst : Wield suffers from this until Child's Play, although it takes Pictures of Perfection for the final symptoms to disappear. How We Got Here : Pictures of Perfection. It Is Pronounced "Tro-PAY" : Tends to happen more in real-life, as a lot of people pronounce "Dalziel" as "Dal-zeel" or "Day-zee-ell" rather than its actual pronunciation.

It sometimes happens in the show as well, albeit quite rarely -- the writers managed to avoid the temptation of turning it into an overused running joke. In the TV version of A Killing Kindness, Dalziel knows he's in trouble when a reporter pronounces his name correctly. Jurisdiction Friction : Ruling Passion. Pascoe, who isn't on his turf, keeps stepping on the toes of the local Detective Superintendent. In the novel, Pascoe turns out to be in the wrong throughout, and the Detective Superintendent solves the crime. Kavorka Man : Dalziel, who attracts a surprising number of women over the course of the series. Knights Templar : A group who actual call themselves this appear in The Death of Dalziel. Last-Name Basis : Wield, with everyone except his partner. Limited Advancement Opportunities : Wield's early annoyance about being stuck at Detective Sergeant is later retconned into being a deliberate choice. Averted with Pascoe, who begins the series as DS, appears in one short story as a newly-minted Detective Constable, and is currently Detective Chief Inspector. The short story "One Small Step" suggests that he'll keep moving upward (but see Alternate Continuity ).

Literary Allusion Title : Virtually every episode based on the novels. (Hill started his career as a lecturer in English literature, and it shows.) Locked Room Mystery : Played with in Good Morning, Midnight, which features a suicide made to look like a locked room murder. Dalziel Lampshades this when he accuses Pascoe of 'being at the John Dickson Carr.' Long Runners : The first novel, A Clubbable Woman, appeared in 1970. The next one was slated for summer of 2013, but given Hill's death in January of 2012, it's not clear yet if he left it in publishable state. Make It Look Like an Accident : The killer's technique in Deadheads. Market-Based Title : Happened to the novels twice: The Death of Dalziel (UK) = Death Comes for the Fat Man (Canada and some other markets). A Cure for All Diseases(UK) = The Price of Butcher's Meat (USA). Mistaken for Cheating : Wield in Death's Jest-Book, although not by his partner. Mistaken for Gay : Dalziel briefly pretends to be gay in order to throw a homophobic superior off Wield's trail.

Motive Rant : Ruling Passion. My Greatest Failure : In 'On Beulah Heights' for Dalziel - the case of three missing girls fifteen years ago. My Secret Pregnancy : Strongly hinted in the TV episode Time to Go: Mary Waddell's son may well be Dalziel's. Mystery Magnet : When Dalziel and Pascoe take vacations, they wind up stumbling into murder cases. Never Suicide : Averted in Bones and Silence and Good Morning, Midnight. The Nicknamer : Dalziel--Pascoe is "Sunbeam," DC Shirley Novello is "Ivor," Wield is "Wieldy," etc. Noble Bigot with a Badge : Played with in Dalziel, who talks like a bigot and misogynist but sometimes acts more liberal than uber-liberal Pascoe. In Child's Play, when Wield is threatened with being outed, Dalziel reveals to him that he knew all along that Wield was gay and didn't particular care as it didn't affect his job. He then goes out of his way to protect Wield from a genuinely homophobic superior.

Justified in that Dalziel, with his working-class background, was regarded as an outsider when he joined the police, and had to prove himself the hard way; he therefore naturally identifies with and defends others who might be considered "outsiders" themselves. Nobody Over 50 Is Gay : The adaptation of Dialogues of the Dead finally introduces Wield's partner from the novels, Edwin Digweed, only to knock thirty years off his age. Obfuscating Stupidity : Dalziel often presents himself as an ignorant fat slob. Woe betide anyone who believes him. Obfuscating Disability : Roote in Cure for all Diseases. Invisible to Gaydar : DS Edgar Wield. Straw Feminist : Ellie Pascoe slides into this a lot during her initial appearances. The Mole : One of the subplots in Dialogues of the Dead involves Dalziel's search for a mole in the police department who is passing on information to a crusading journalist. The Perfect Crime : Deadheads. Successfully. So much so that in the novels, the killer is still living a few doors down from Pascoe, many years later. Bones and Silence. Not so successfully. Dialogues of the Dead.

Successfully again, although in Death's Jest-Book Dalziel realizes, with some horror, who the killer must have been. Too late, however, to do anything about it. The Summation : Pascoe tries it in the adaptation of Ruling Passion, and nearly gets shot for his pains. Three Plus Two : With the addition of Shirley Novello and Hat Bowler to the original Power Trio . Dalziel & Pascoe | Aurora Public Library | BiblioCommons LittleNoName Aug 03, 2016 I only watched one episode as I thought it was too much about the detectives lives. Might come back to when Ive watched all the other movies & series I have piled up in my "for later" shelf. Like 1 11030sw55 Jun 20, 2016 Reginald Hill is my absolute favorite mystery author and I had considerable trepidation about television adaptions of his books, but this first series seems true to the sources. Dalziel is well cast, though maybe not as fat as written. Surprising to me, these dvds are a new way to enjoy the stories, now that the author has died and there will no longer be new books published.

Like c cjkerry Sep 07, 2015 Decent mystery series. The first two episodes are better than the third one, though that one is still worth watching. Like l LauraSteinert Jul 24, 2015 There is no excuse for it, but I actually like Dalziel. This is not what I expected (haven't read the books) but the second disk is one long episode and it was very good. Well worth watching. Like l Loge99 Mar 25, 2015 The British certainly like their mysteries. This one is a step up from series like Midsommer Murders (which are tiresomely cozy and much the same from one episode to another). Ranks with P.D. James' Thaw series. Like f Fionaenzo Jul 27, 2013 what a great series! the acting of the main characters is terrific -- they stay true to the character but also grow as individuals . gets better and better with each season - plot twists and some dialogue is laugh out loud funny once you know the characters. many literary references and ridicule of same -- smart show.

Like c c_anderson May 23, 2010 Not as good as the books! of course, a 1 1/2 hour show has to leave out some detail, but Pascoe doesn't look at all like his description in the novels (slight and dark), and the Northern dialect has been toned down in the show. Like

Question: Who created the fictional detectives Dalziel and Pascoe?
Answer: REGINALD HILL